Canterbury

By Lisa Barrowclough
Lambeth Conference Communications

The voices of Anglicans speaking out of personal pain quickly brought the Lambeth Conference plenary on making moral decisions out of the realm of theory. Two presentations and a video offered stark stories of very human struggles.

The session, with its mix of strong illustrations followed by thoughtful reflection by Bishop Rowan Williams of Monmouth (Wales), sought to "find a way forward for the leaders of the Church," said plenary coordinator Bishop Victoria Matthews of Edmonton (Canada).

A clash of faiths

Mano Rumalshah, Bishop of Peshawar in the Church of Pakistan, the sessions's first presenter, spoke of deadly dangers that daily face Christians in regions where Islamic teaching is law.

Bishop Rumalshah recalled the May 6 death of Roman Catholic Bishop John Joseph. His last word's were ". . . in protest against [the Blasphemy Law] and other black laws, and in the name of my oppressed Christian people, secularism and democracy, I am taking my life."

The bishop's death generated "acute public debate on the morality of his action, because in common language, what he did is called suicide," Bishop Rumalshah said. "But is it possible to think of Bishop John laying down his life as an act in the same fashion as that of Jesus? Isn't this also in keeping with the call, 'take up your cross and follow me?'"

Bishop Rumalshah told of a 15-year-old Christian schoolgirl who was accused of insulting the holy prophet of Islam in her classroom. More than 200 local Muslim clerics signed an oath to kill her.

"With the consent of her family and, perhaps, even her religious leaders, she converted to Islam to save her life," he said.

Two of his parishioners in a part of the diocese where Islamic Law is fully enforced were offered a stark choice - to be converted to Islam and accepted as a lawful husband and wife, or to be tried under an adultery ordinance and be liable to capital punishment. They became Muslims.

"In both these cases, there is a deep sense of guilt and remorse, and even spiritual strain," Bishop Rumalshah said. "In these situations of apparent apostasy, what needs to be our moral and pastoral responsibility?" he asked. At the same time, Christian converts are legally disinherited of all possessions and ostracized for the rest of their lives. There are rumors of a proposal to make both the baptizer and the baptized liable for prosecution under the draconian Blasphemy Law, which usually means death.

"Should we be encouraging public baptisms of those converting from Islam in such a climate? Or do we make 'secret believers' - a choice I once ridiculed, but now I am struggling to accept," he said. "As always, what we need are new signposts for our generation which are applicable in our respective contexts."

Violence as a way of life

Bishop Daniel Zindo of the Diocese of Yambio in the Sudan brought many in the room to tears with his story of how murderous violence erupted in his home.

"Here was our son-in-law who rebelled against us and killed my wife Grace Zindo, our son Yoane Khalifa, and then thirty minutes later killed himself too!" he said, as gasps echoed in the room. Minutes before the violence erupted the bishop had left to make a pastoral call.

Bishop Zindo placed his story in the context of the culture of violence created by 32 years of civil war, a culture in which a God of peace can quickly seem irrelevant.

"Killing human beings . . . has become a game of interest only," he said. Personal and social violence are profoundly related. Violence in a society, "because it rises in the human heart, so easily finds a way of becoming violence in our own homes."

He asked, "How does one raise children and grandchildren who have witnessed killing and suicide to believe in a God who seeks peace, and our Lord who is our peace? How does one proclaim the good news of God's love to our own families - let alone to a society - who have experienced first hand a culture of violence?"

Video probes divergent views

In the video, prepared by Trinity Parish, Wall Street in New York City, actors related the stories of 10 unnamed people who have confronted difficult personal dilemmas.

"My ancestors lived here long before the English and French came to our shores," began the story of a Native Canadian. "We lost our land and rivers, some say we even lost our souls. . . The missionaries said that we must not follow our own spiritual traditions, but must worship their God. 'The white man brought the Bible, but we got the church.' Our culture vanished, and we were left with nothing. The government has apologized and offered compensation, but for many of us, the question remains, `Who am I?"

The narrator asked, "As bishops, can we stand alongside cultures within our culture?"

A woman said, "My husband and I once served as missionaries in the Far East. Today we live with a baby girl we adopted from an orphanage in Beijing. The orphanages in China are filled with hundreds of thousands of female children. When they become teenagers, these girls are forced to live on their own as peasants or prostitutes. My mind is seared by the memory of our arrival at the orphanage, a groups of girls ages 7 to 10, smiling, laughing, waving to us from a balcony. Hours later, departing with a six-month-old cradled in my arms, the same girls stood by . . .in silence."

The narrator asked, "As bishops, are we able to provide leadership?"

A gay man living openly with a partner sings in the choir in his parish church, but does not feel welcome. He senses that some parishioners wish he would go away, "that a man who does not conceal his sexual preference, who might ask a blessing upon our union, the love we share, does not belong in their church."

But a priest feels called to counsel gay men to resist their orientation. "'Do not lose heart,' I counseled them. 'Genuine intimacy between two men - without physical contact - is possible. Through prayer, you will find the courage and discipline to share your love, yet be celibate, faithful to one another and to the church you love.'"

The narrator asked, "As bishops, what message do we want to send to the gay community?"

Other stories raised the issue of AIDS in the context of an African culture that calls for the widow of a man who died of AIDS to marry his brother, who also may be HIV positive, of euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Between each of the sets of stories, the video asked, "Will the Church help show the way forward?"

Making decisions more than a supermarket choice

In an address that prompted rousing applause and a standing ovation from participants in the plenary hall where he spoke, Bishop Williams offered a concluding focus on how the church could make moral decisions.

Bishop Williams reminded his colleagues that making decisions is not as simple as "being faced with a series of clear alternatives, as if we were standing in front of the supermarket shelf." Decisions, instead, are "coloured" by the sort of decision-maker. "The choice is not made," said Bishop Williams, "by a will operating in the abstract, but by someone who is used to thinking and imagining in a certain way."

He referred to the writing of Welsh philosopher Rush Rhees and British Catholic theologian and moralist Herbert McCabe and summarized their points by stating "[it is] not that ethics is a matter of the individual's likes or dislikes, but, on the contrary, that it is a difficult discovering of something about yourself, a discovering of what has already shaped the person you are and is moulding you in this or that direction." For Christians, he said, this discovery is the recognition of the person who is shaped by membership in the Church, the Body of Christ.

Christians make moral decisions in the same way as other people, he asserted. "That is to say, they don't automatically have more information about moral truth," said Williams. "What is different is the relations in which they are involved, relations that shape a particular kind of reaction to their environment and each other."

These Christian relations also carry with them a certain standard. How does any proposed style or policy of action "manifest the selfless holiness of God in Christ, and how can it serve as a gift that builds up the community called to show that holiness in its corporate life?"

Recognising different accents

Local Christian communities, however, "gradually and subtly come to take for granted slightly different things, to speak of God with a marked local accent," Bishop Williams said. He drew attention to the difficulties and struggles, which grow out of encounters "with a different accents." Bishop Williams reminded his colleagues that these differing accents belong to members of the same Body - to people whom "we meet at the Lord's Table."

Bishop Williams challenged the bishops and all members of the Communion to "listen when someone says 'This is what I see - look with me'." He reminded his colleagues to look not only at their own selves and cultures in their decision-making, but also to remember their commitment to belonging with, listening to, and learning from Christian strangers - past, present and future.

"I am not sure what or how I can learn from them," Bishop Williams shared honestly. "They may frighten me - they do frighten me - by the difference of their priorities and their discernment. (And remember that on both sides lies fear!) But because of where we all stand at the Lord's Table, in the Body, I have to listen to them and to struggle to make recognisable sense to them."